Overview and CQC Inspections

OverallGood

Our inspector's description of this service

Last updated 10 June 2017
We carried out this inspection under Section 60 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 as part of our regulatory functions. This inspection checked whether the provider is meeting the legal requirements and regulations associated with the Health and Social Care Act 2008, to look at the

overall quality of the service, and to provide a rating for the service under The Care Act 2014.

This inspection took place on the 4 May 2017 and was unannounced, which meant that the provider did not know that we were coming. The inspection was carried out by one inspector.

Before the inspection we looked at previous inspection records and intelligence we had received about the service and notifications. Notifications are information about specific important events the service is legally required to send to us. Everyone living at the service had very complex needs and were not able to verbally communicate with us, or chose not to, so we used observation as the main way to gather evidence of people’s experiences of the service.

We used the Short Observational Framework for Inspection (SOFI). SOFI is a way of observing care to help us understand the experience of people who could not talk with us. We observed how the staff interacted with people in the communal areas, during meal times, and we looked around the service. We spent time observing the support and care provided to help us understand people's experiences of living in the service.

We spoke with the registered manger, the service manager, the deputy manager, four members of staff and two relatives. We reviewed four people’s care files, four staff recruitment and support files, training records and quality assurance information.

Inspection ratings

We rate most services according to how safe, effective, caring, responsive and well-led they are, using four levels:

Outstanding – the service is performing exceptionally well.

Good – the service is performing well and meeting our expectations.

Requires improvement – the service isn't performing as well as it should and we have told the service how it must improve.

Inadequate – the service is performing badly and we've taken enforcement action against the provider of the service.

No rating/under appeal/rating suspended – there are some services which we can’t rate, while some might be under appeal from the provider. Suspended ratings are being reviewed by us and will be published soon.

Ticks and crosses

We don't rate every type of service. For services we haven't rated we use ticks and crosses to show whether we've asked them to take further action or taken enforcement action against them.

There's no need for the service to take further action. If this service has not had a CQC inspection since it registered with us, our judgement may be based on our assessment of declarations and evidence supplied by the service.

The service must make improvements.

At least one standard in this area was not being met when we inspected the service and we have taken enforcement action.